Not By Blind Fate
by ResOmnesBeneFacere
Summary: Before her coronation, Shireen reflects on two decisions-one by her father and one by herself-that changed her life.


Shireen loved the sound of bells.

She knew there were some who hated them. An omen of fear, they called their pealing. Her father had always disagreed, saying that a just man had nothing to fear. But it was not for that reason she loved the sound. It carried a certain assurance. The hours would pass, but the sun would rise again. Death would come, but so would new births. _Valar morghulis_ , the Braavosi said, _all men must die._ Words that rang so true.

Yet there was a bit of trepidation in her breast as she listened to the singing of the bells. High above King's Landing they rang, their bronze notes calling the people to the funeral of their king. Her father. King Stannis would be laid to rest, a smile on his face at long last. _Would that be how he wanted to be remembered?_

Stannis, she knew, would have ground his teeth at the extravagance of the coming funeral. But the people would have accepted nothing else for the man they had come over time to call, half-mockingly and half-affectionately, the Old Lobster. For half a moment, she wondered what name they would devise for her now she would be their Queen, before reminding herself that there was only one title that mattered. _Queen Shireen. Will I be worthy of that title?_ The title was empty, her father and old Lord Davos had always reminded her, without a worthy person behind it. Her father had been more than worthy, she was sure. But now he was gone.

It was almost time to leave her room. She looked in the mirror and paused. A bit of insecurity passed across her, a moment of wondering if the greatest decision she had ever made was correct. Her long black hair fell freely over her shoulders, but did nothing to hide the large ears of her mother and the square jaw of her father. And her face…half of her left cheek and most of her neck were covered in cracked and flaking, grey and black skin. Greyscale, the disease was called. She had had it ever since she was a child, for over three decades now. And it could have been taken away.

It had been the Red Priest, Thoros, the one who had proved himself far truer a priest to R'hllor than Melisandre. Shireen had cared for him after the terrible last battle at the Trident, when ice fought fire and fire fought fire, when those who should have assisted humanity insisted on recovering a lost crown and were instead cast down, and where the only shadows were those cast by the flames. Poor Thoros had been horribly injured, and known he would never be able to live for himself. Instead, he offered to let the remaining fire in him flow into Shireen, to lift the darkness from her face.

The greyscale had been called a deformity, a curse, an affliction. It was the reason many averted their looks around her. It was the reason Shireen had been sad and lonely as a child, as her mother sought to hide her from the public eye. And now, with a fiery kiss, it could have all been burned away.

Shireen had seen the hunger in her father's look as he looked between Thoros and her, seen all his anguish and all his hope for her. She met his gaze, and all her life passed before her eyes in that moment.

 _"_ _When you were an infant, a Dornish trader landed on Dragonstone,"_ Stannis had once told her when she asked if he was ashamed of her. " _His goods were junk, except for one wooden doll. He had even sewn a dress on it, in the colors of our house. No doubt he'd heard of your birth, and assumed that new fathers were easy targets. I still remember how you smiled when I put that doll in your cradle, how you pressed it to your cheek._

 _By the time we burnt the doll, it was too late. I was told you would die, or worse, the grayscale would go slow. Let you grow just enough to know the world, before taking it away from you. Everyone advised me to send you to the ruins of Valyria, to live out your short life with the stone men, before the sickness spread through the castle._

 _I told them all to go to hell. I called in every maester on this side of the world, every healer, every apothecary. They stopped the disease and saved your life, because you did not belong on the other side of the world with the bloody stone men. You are the Princess Shireen of House Baratheon, and you are my daughter."_

Stannis had never been one to show his emotions, let alone love, but he had never looked as vulnerable as when he told that story. That love, so awkwardly expressed, had been unconditional. She remembered that moment, and known that she could not accept Thoros' gift. She refused that type of healing. Her father had stared at her, and then nodded, as if he finally understood her. And that had been the most precious healing of all. Because, in the end, the greyscale served as a reminder of its own powerlessness. It might have shaped her, but it would never define her. She would not be the ugly girl with the greyscale, as some so glibly called her. That girl had never really existed. It was Shireen Baratheon who lived. It was Shireen Baratheon whom her father loved. It was Shireen Baratheon who had survived far darker terrors than greyscale, and it was Shireen Baratheon who would be queen.

 _Queen Shireen_. The title still seemed strange to her. Devan Seaworth had been the first to acclaim her as such, but he had always called her that. And yet her father had said those two words with so much confidence when he had her proclaimed as his successor, and even more on his deathbed. _There must have been a purpose for all this_ , she reflected. The improbability of her survival as an infant, all that her mother had suffered in the vain hope of bearing a son, the lonely life amidst salt and smoke, the fiery death from which Devan had once rescued her. Surviving the Long Night when so many good men and women did not, her father's unexpected reign. None of it should ever have happened without a higher purpose.

Later that day, she would begin to find what that purpose was, when the crown was placed on her head. Queen _Shireen. May I be worthy of you and your trust_ , _Father_ , Shireen thought as she turned away from the mirror. _I will not let it all be in vain._ She would be strong; the day that she had resolved to live the rest of her life with greyscale was the day when she resolved to leave behind the insecurities and doubts.

The bells had stopped ringing. It was time to bury her father, in more ways than one. Time to bury her childhood and the past, and face the future. A future, with all its storms and furies, which would be hers to guide. She couldn't only be Stannis' daughter, any more than she was only the ugly girl with greyscale.

Resolutely, Shireen set her jaw and turned her steps towards the throne room where her father and her future subjects awaited. The crowds turned towards her, a sea of black and gold. She knew Stannis would once have mocked them and their falseness, but it was a different time now and a different court. Here was a Stormlander that she had nursed back to health from the plague brought by the black dragon's army, when all others feared to go near him. There was a woman whom she had rescued from Baelish's unfine establishment and made into a teacher. She saw a beloved man who had fought to defend her as a mere squire and whom she had in turn saved from death, and a merchant who had been a beggar before she taught him to read. There were a hundred others in the room whom she had affected in one way or another.

It started as a lonely voice from the back of the room. Another voice joined it, and then another. And like a storm in Shipbreaker's Bay, it grew by leaps and bounds. All of a sudden it filled the room, a roar that would not be stilled. "Queen Shireen!" they shouted over and over. And as her eyes welled with tears, Shireen thanked Stannis for his determination to save her, and the gods for the courage to never give in to despair. The crowd shouted for her. For the person that she was. For what she had done for them all. For the true inner beauty that the greyscale could never dim.

 _Ours is the fury. Ours is the victory._


End file.
